I believe there’s sage advice stating something to the effect of a weapon being used as an improvised weapon is treated as though it has lost its properties. I’ll edit if I find the reference.
If you use a weapon in a way that turns it into an improvised weapon—such as smacking someone with a bow—that weapon has none of its regular properties, unless the DM rules otherwise. #DnD
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@JeremyECrawford Can you use a longbow in melee to get GWM and Sharpshooter in a single attack for +20 damage?
GWM says when you make an attack with a heavy weapon you can take a -5 to the rolled to hit score for +10 damage.
Sharpshooter allows you to do the same with a ranged weapon.
Longbows are both ranged weapons and heavy. Can I take a -10 to hit for a +20 to damage?
Am I reading this all correctly?
Yes, but Jeremy Crawford has tweeted that one of the many rules 5E is intended to have that isn't in any rulebook is that when you make an improvised weapon attack with a weapon, it loses its properties, so a melee weapon attack made with a longbow means the longbow loses heavy for the attack. Most DMs subscribe to this tweet.
I'm pretty sure OP was talking about using GWM on the ranged attack of the longbow, not bashing someone with it. And they're not reading it correctly since GWM specifies that it only applies to melee attacks while Sharpshooter only applies to ranged attacks.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You hit the nail on the head, 6th. I was just about to say the same thing. If it worked as the OP thought, so many builds would use this. Well, maybe not, -10 to hit is a pretty big hurdle.
Yeah no I did in fact overlook the "With a melee weapon" part. But the -10 to hit wouldn't be THAT big of a deal if I can already make a build that gives me +12 to hit at level 5 if not more. But yeah. That's on me.
"Before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage."
"Before you make an attack with a ranged weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage."
Not quite mirror statements, so RAW if you make a melee attack with a heavy ranged weapon that you are proficient with, you can take -10 to hit for +20 damage. While the writers were probably trying to avoid being repetitive by not stating "Before you make a ranged attack with a ranged weapon..." they should have kept the melee/ranged modifier on the same part of the sentence for each feat to avoid this situation.
Under Weapon Properties: "If you use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a melee attack, you treat the weapon as an improvised weapon (see "Improvised Weapons" later in the section)", so the longbow is definitely a improvised weapon in this case.
Under Improvised Weapons: "Often, an improvised weapon is similar to an actual weapon and can be treated as such." I'm feeling confident that a longbow is about as similar to a actual weapon (namely, a longbow) as you can get, and therefore you can use it as longbow. So either it is a longbow, or it is a improvised weapon that can be used as a longbow. Potayto / Potahto.
Also from that section: "If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, or throws a melee weapon that does not have the thrown property, it also deals 1d4 damage." If you are so inclined, you can melee attack with a blowgun or a net to deal 1d4 damage. Not relevant to the OP's question, but good for geek trivia night. "In D&D 5th Edition, which ranged weapons deal more damage in melee than at range?"
So strictly RAW, you can take -10 to hit, and deal 1d4+20 (both modified by your personal details as appropriate) with a longbow or a heavy crossbow. But I expect most every GM will limit Sharpshooter to ranged attacks, so don't get your hopes up.
Don't all characters lack proficiency with improvised weapons?
Correct! You'll also need to take Tavern Brawler. 3 Feats so you can thwack the snot out of someone with a (cross)bow, if you hit.
Or, (assuming your GM lets you do any of this insanity in the first place), they could also rule that being similar to a weapon allows proficiency if you have proficiency in that similar weapon. So you'd only need TB for items not intended to be weapons (beer steins, table legs, halflings, etc) or when improvising with weapons that you are not proficient in using (using the intended way, that is). It depends on how the GM interprets "can be treated as such". Given that Aragorn, Legolas, & Hawkeye, among many others I am sure, use thier bow in melee when they don't have time to draw thier sword, I'd allow it for a few rounds at least.
Also! Per Sneak Attack: "The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon." Not a ranged attack, a ranged weapon. So 1d4+20+10d6+...
In that tweet Jeremy Crawford answers this question.
As a side note, when I see people trying to abuse things like this, I can't help but feel sorry for designers. Whatever you do, there will always be someone who will try to "gameify" the rulebook to the point where it no longer makes sense. By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack. Could the rulebook specify it? It could, but surely someone would manage to twist the wording in search of some other absurd advantage.
Don't all characters lack proficiency with improvised weapons?
Correct! You'll also need to take Tavern Brawler. 3 Feats so you can thwack the snot out of someone with a (cross)bow, if you hit.
Or, (assuming your GM lets you do any of this insanity in the first place), they could also rule that being similar to a weapon allows proficiency if you have proficiency in that similar weapon. So you'd only need TB for items not intended to be weapons (beer steins, table legs, halflings, etc) or when improvising with weapons that you are not proficient in using (using the intended way, that is). It depends on how the GM interprets "can be treated as such". Given that Aragorn, Legolas, & Hawkeye, among many others I am sure, use thier bow in melee when they don't have time to draw thier sword, I'd allow it for a few rounds at least.
Also! Per Sneak Attack: "The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon." Not a ranged attack, a ranged weapon. So 1d4+20+10d6+...
Throw a little bit of Sentinel in there for the last line just to dish out the pain even when it's not your turn? I mean... what more could you really ask for? A lot. I know. But still. Fun stuff....
In that tweet Jeremy Crawford answers this question.
As a side note, when I see people trying to abuse things like this, I can't help but feel sorry for designers. Whatever you do, there will always be someone who will try to "gameify" the rulebook to the point where it no longer makes sense. By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack. Could the rulebook specify it? It could, but surely someone would manage to twist the wording in search of some other absurd advantage.
"By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack" - I would say it didn't lose anything. I simply did not use it for what it was manufactured for. A gun is still a gun, a ranged weapon, even if I just grab the barrel and hit someone across the face with it. It didn't suddenly stop being a ranged weapon because I didn't use it to hit someone from a range. I just didn't use it for that purpose....
In that tweet Jeremy Crawford answers this question.
As a side note, when I see people trying to abuse things like this, I can't help but feel sorry for designers. Whatever you do, there will always be someone who will try to "gameify" the rulebook to the point where it no longer makes sense. By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack. Could the rulebook specify it? It could, but surely someone would manage to twist the wording in search of some other absurd advantage.
"By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack" - I would say it didn't lose anything. I simply did not use it for what it was manufactured for. A gun is still a gun, a ranged weapon, even if I just grab the barrel and hit someone across the face with it. It didn't suddenly stop being a ranged weapon because I didn't use it to hit someone from a range. I just didn't use it for that purpose....
But when used as a melee weapon it still loses the "ranged property" in regards to that melee attack.
In that tweet Jeremy Crawford answers this question.
As a side note, when I see people trying to abuse things like this, I can't help but feel sorry for designers. Whatever you do, there will always be someone who will try to "gameify" the rulebook to the point where it no longer makes sense. By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack. Could the rulebook specify it? It could, but surely someone would manage to twist the wording in search of some other absurd advantage.
"By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack" - I would say it didn't lose anything. I simply did not use it for what it was manufactured for. A gun is still a gun, a ranged weapon, even if I just grab the barrel and hit someone across the face with it. It didn't suddenly stop being a ranged weapon because I didn't use it to hit someone from a range. I just didn't use it for that purpose....
Rene Magritte's pipe.
In any case, beyond semiotic disquisitions, here we are talking about abstractions to be able to play a role-playing game.
Sometimes we seem like Jewish rabbis discussing the Torah.
But when used as a melee weapon it still loses the "ranged property" in regards to that melee attack.
Ranged is not a property, just as melee isn't. Even if a ranged weapon loses all of its properties, it will remain a ranged weapon.
The reason you can't combine SS with GWM on a longbow (assuming you remove properties from improvised weapons) is that GWM checks for an actual property - heavy.
Even if you could, i wonder how potent it would actually be to attack at -10 / + 20. It'd be a rather stiff penalty and the risk of overkill would be even be greater.
Even if you could, i wonder how potent it would actually be to attack at -10 / + 20. It'd be a rather stiff penalty and the risk of overkill would be even be greater.
If you had a +5 strength you would expect 19.25 points of damage with a +2 proficiency bonus and Tavern Brawler against an AC 12 and 11 points of damage against an AC 18. If you only had a +2, those numbers would drop to 13.475 and 6.125. How many attacks would you need to make to expect that normally? How deadly is the creature that you are attacking? Can you afford to miss a few? Are you probably dead regardless?
Even if you could, i wonder how potent it would actually be to attack at -10 / + 20. It'd be a rather stiff penalty and the risk of overkill would be even be greater.
If you had a +5 strength you would expect 19.25 points of damage with a +2 proficiency bonus and Tavern Brawler against an AC 12 and 11 points of damage against an AC 18. If you only had a +2, those numbers would drop to 13.475 and 6.125. How many attacks would you need to make to expect that normally? How deadly is the creature that you are attacking? Can you afford to miss a few? Are you probably dead regardless?
I don't really know i'm not really a math guy those into CharOp could tell better than me.
It depends both on baseline relative accuracy (the easier something is to hit, the more you can afford to be less accurate in exchange for more damage) and baseline damage (the more damage you're already doing, the less valuable it is to deal more damage). The former is why Archery is considered so strong paired with Sharpshooter and the latter is why Sneak Attack is usually considered a very poor pairing with Sharpshooter.
To give an example of being sufficiently accurate with sufficiently poor baseline damage, a Battle Master 11/Gloom Stalker 3/Whatever 3 with Elven Accuracy for Triple Advantage and Archery (baseline accuracy +13) using GWM+SS and making 4 attacks with a 5th attack on a crit (so I can assume a superiority die on every swing) using said dice for Precision Attack (+1d10 to hit) unless the attack crits in which case Menacing is used (+2d10 damage) attacking AC 19:
+13 to hit, weapon damage is 1d4+5: DPR 41.99
+8 to hit, weapon damage is 1d4+15: DPR 84.65
+3 to hit, weapon damage is 1d4+25: DPR 114.48
SS->PAM, using a glaive (the spare 3 levels are spent on Hexblade to guarantee this is legal):
+13 to hit, weapon damage is 1d10+5: DPR 62.35
+8 to hit, weapon damage is 1d10+15: DPR 109.86
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GWM says when you make an attack with a heavy weapon you can take a -5 to the rolled to hit score for +10 damage.
Sharpshooter allows you to do the same with a ranged weapon.
Longbows are both ranged weapons and heavy. Can I take a -10 to hit for a +20 to damage?
Am I reading this all correctly?
Oh mine, it’s seems valid RAW, but it’s definitely not RAI.
I believe there’s sage advice stating something to the effect of a weapon being used as an improvised weapon is treated as though it has lost its properties. I’ll edit if I find the reference.
Edit: https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/933436175649406976?lang=en
Yes, but Jeremy Crawford has tweeted that one of the many rules 5E is intended to have that isn't in any rulebook is that when you make an improvised weapon attack with a weapon, it loses its properties, so a melee weapon attack made with a longbow means the longbow loses heavy for the attack. Most DMs subscribe to this tweet.
I'm pretty sure OP was talking about using GWM on the ranged attack of the longbow, not bashing someone with it. And they're not reading it correctly since GWM specifies that it only applies to melee attacks while Sharpshooter only applies to ranged attacks.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You hit the nail on the head, 6th. I was just about to say the same thing. If it worked as the OP thought, so many builds would use this. Well, maybe not, -10 to hit is a pretty big hurdle.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Yeah no I did in fact overlook the "With a melee weapon" part. But the -10 to hit wouldn't be THAT big of a deal if I can already make a build that gives me +12 to hit at level 5 if not more. But yeah. That's on me.
"Before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage."
"Before you make an attack with a ranged weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage."
Not quite mirror statements, so RAW if you make a melee attack with a heavy ranged weapon that you are proficient with, you can take -10 to hit for +20 damage. While the writers were probably trying to avoid being repetitive by not stating "Before you make a ranged attack with a ranged weapon..." they should have kept the melee/ranged modifier on the same part of the sentence for each feat to avoid this situation.
Under Weapon Properties: "If you use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a melee attack, you treat the weapon as an improvised weapon (see "Improvised Weapons" later in the section)", so the longbow is definitely a improvised weapon in this case.
Under Improvised Weapons: "Often, an improvised weapon is similar to an actual weapon and can be treated as such." I'm feeling confident that a longbow is about as similar to a actual weapon (namely, a longbow) as you can get, and therefore you can use it as longbow. So either it is a longbow, or it is a improvised weapon that can be used as a longbow. Potayto / Potahto.
Also from that section: "If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, or throws a melee weapon that does not have the thrown property, it also deals 1d4 damage." If you are so inclined, you can melee attack with a blowgun or a net to deal 1d4 damage. Not relevant to the OP's question, but good for geek trivia night. "In D&D 5th Edition, which ranged weapons deal more damage in melee than at range?"
So strictly RAW, you can take -10 to hit, and deal 1d4+20 (both modified by your personal details as appropriate) with a longbow or a heavy crossbow. But I expect most every GM will limit Sharpshooter to ranged attacks, so don't get your hopes up.
Don't all characters lack proficiency with improvised weapons?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Correct! You'll also need to take Tavern Brawler. 3 Feats so you can thwack the snot out of someone with a (cross)bow, if you hit.
Or, (assuming your GM lets you do any of this insanity in the first place), they could also rule that being similar to a weapon allows proficiency if you have proficiency in that similar weapon. So you'd only need TB for items not intended to be weapons (beer steins, table legs, halflings, etc) or when improvising with weapons that you are not proficient in using (using the intended way, that is). It depends on how the GM interprets "can be treated as such". Given that Aragorn, Legolas, & Hawkeye, among many others I am sure, use thier bow in melee when they don't have time to draw thier sword, I'd allow it for a few rounds at least.
Also! Per Sneak Attack: "The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon." Not a ranged attack, a ranged weapon. So 1d4+20+10d6+...
https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/933436175649406976
In that tweet Jeremy Crawford answers this question.
As a side note, when I see people trying to abuse things like this, I can't help but feel sorry for designers. Whatever you do, there will always be someone who will try to "gameify" the rulebook to the point where it no longer makes sense. By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack. Could the rulebook specify it? It could, but surely someone would manage to twist the wording in search of some other absurd advantage.
Throw a little bit of Sentinel in there for the last line just to dish out the pain even when it's not your turn? I mean... what more could you really ask for? A lot. I know. But still. Fun stuff....
"By pure common sense, it stands to reason that if you use a longbow at melee, it lost the ranged property for that attack" - I would say it didn't lose anything. I simply did not use it for what it was manufactured for. A gun is still a gun, a ranged weapon, even if I just grab the barrel and hit someone across the face with it. It didn't suddenly stop being a ranged weapon because I didn't use it to hit someone from a range. I just didn't use it for that purpose....
But when used as a melee weapon it still loses the "ranged property" in regards to that melee attack.
Rene Magritte's pipe.
In any case, beyond semiotic disquisitions, here we are talking about abstractions to be able to play a role-playing game.
Sometimes we seem like Jewish rabbis discussing the Torah.
Ranged is not a property, just as melee isn't. Even if a ranged weapon loses all of its properties, it will remain a ranged weapon.
The reason you can't combine SS with GWM on a longbow (assuming you remove properties from improvised weapons) is that GWM checks for an actual property - heavy.
Even if you could, i wonder how potent it would actually be to attack at -10 / + 20. It'd be a rather stiff penalty and the risk of overkill would be even be greater.
If you had a +5 strength you would expect 19.25 points of damage with a +2 proficiency bonus and Tavern Brawler against an AC 12 and 11 points of damage against an AC 18. If you only had a +2, those numbers would drop to 13.475 and 6.125. How many attacks would you need to make to expect that normally? How deadly is the creature that you are attacking? Can you afford to miss a few? Are you probably dead regardless?
I don't really know i'm not really a math guy those into CharOp could tell better than me.
It depends both on baseline relative accuracy (the easier something is to hit, the more you can afford to be less accurate in exchange for more damage) and baseline damage (the more damage you're already doing, the less valuable it is to deal more damage). The former is why Archery is considered so strong paired with Sharpshooter and the latter is why Sneak Attack is usually considered a very poor pairing with Sharpshooter.
To give an example of being sufficiently accurate with sufficiently poor baseline damage, a Battle Master 11/Gloom Stalker 3/Whatever 3 with Elven Accuracy for Triple Advantage and Archery (baseline accuracy +13) using GWM+SS and making 4 attacks with a 5th attack on a crit (so I can assume a superiority die on every swing) using said dice for Precision Attack (+1d10 to hit) unless the attack crits in which case Menacing is used (+2d10 damage) attacking AC 19:
SS->PAM, using a glaive (the spare 3 levels are spent on Hexblade to guarantee this is legal):